


The Things You Don’t Expect

by Alethia



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Brotherly Bonding, Gen, Growing Up, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, Pre-Canon, Sam Asks a lot of Questions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-02-13
Updated: 2006-02-13
Packaged: 2018-01-10 12:40:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1159851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alethia/pseuds/Alethia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What do people mean by ‘the birds and the bees?’”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Things You Don’t Expect

**Author's Note:**

> Sam's eleven and Dean's fifteen. My thanks to laivine for the beta. Originally posted on LJ [here](http://alethialia.livejournal.com/180393.html).

“What do people mean by ‘the birds and the bees?’” Sam asked, totally out of the blue. Dean’s fork stopped on its way to his mouth; Dad wasn’t so lucky, coughing a little.

But no, Sam had looked a question at Dean last week when Dean had flirted with the hotty neighborhood grocery clerk. And he’d been mildly puzzled at some of the more provocative magazine covers for at least a month.

The question fully hit then, just exactly who was gonna field it, and Dean grinned, turning to Dad with eyebrows raised.

Dad caught his look, pulled back a bit. “What?” he asked.

“You’re the father,” Dean pointed out, all helpful-tone and bright smile. Dad shot him a look that said he didn’t appreciate his firstborn abandoning him in his time of need, ungrateful traitor. If all that could be stuffed into a look, which it _so could_ as far as Dean was concerned.

“Yes, I’ve just been painfully reminded of that fact.” He sighed. “The birds and the bees has traditionally been used as a way for parents to explain sex to children without actually having to mention sex.” Dean snickered. He sounded like he was quoting a text book.

“Oh.” Sammy pushed his fork around, frowning. “That’s stupid.”

Trust Sam to think clinically first, viscerally second. “Okay,” Dean snorted.

“Their reproduction has nothing in common with human reproduction,” he informed them primly.

Something clicked in Dean’s head—ahh, that biology book he’d seen in Sam’s backpack last night. It had niggled at the time, too advanced, but Sam was a nerd and Dean was willing to let it go.

“Well, maybe a few things,” Dad said dryly.

Sam pushed his fork around some more while Dad tried to forcefully push away the awkwardness by shoving food into his mouth. Dean just watched both with ever-increasing joy.

“But why do you even like girls?” Sam continued.

“Dude, boobs,” Dean said when the silence said Dad didn’t seem inclined to jump in.

Sam turned suspicious eyes on him. “But they all have those. What makes any of them different?”

“Oh, c’mon, girls are all the same,” Dean said, rolling his eyes.

“But then why’d you marry Mom, if they’re all the same?” Sam asked, rounding on Dad. Kid was gonna get whiplash if he kept that up.

Dad cleared his throat. “Your mother was a very special woman.”

“Yeah, but Dean just said they’re all the same. What made her so special?”

And Dad’s face just—shut down. “That’s enough,” he said, quiet.

“Yeah, but—”

“Sam. That’s enough. You don’t speak about your mother like that.” Dad had pulled the warning tone, the tone Sam either didn’t recognize or didn’t care about because he never, never backed down.

“But all I wanted to know was—”

“Sam. Did you hear what I said?”

Sam visibly deflated, slouching in his chair. “Yes, sir.”

Dad held the disproving look for another moment, before looking back to his plate. “And don’t slouch.”

Sam was quiet for a while, all three of them going back to eating. “May I please be excused from the table?”

“Not until you finish your dinner.”

“I am finished,” he said shortly, getting up and walking to his room without waiting to be given permission.

Dean waited a beat.

“That was good, Dad. Impressive.”

Dad had kind of slumped, pushing his food around with his fork. “Why are things so much easier with you?”

Dean snorted. “Please. You had other parents calling you when I was that age. Besides I just started checking out chicks. Sammy’s a little different.”

Dad shook his head. “God, I wish your mother were here. She’d know what to do. She always knew—what to do.” Then he got quiet, focus turned inward, and Dean mumbled something, getting up and wandering away, half his food unfinished. Dad would be annoyed when he resurfaced, but Dean could deal with that later.

Sam was probably already sniffling into his pillow.

***

Dean tossed a pillow at him. “Hey! You know how he gets when you bring up Mom.”

Sam shot up, maybe not so far gone into crybaby mode as Dean had thought. “It wasn’t even about that. He made it about that so he could avoid what I was asking.”

Dean grunted, annoyed. Why did he get stuck with all this shit?

“Well, it’s not like you were bein’ the most agreeable person in there.”

Sam stuck up his nose and refused to answer.

“Oh, please. Saying it like that? In the middle of shoveling down your macaroni? You were looking for a reaction so don’t act all innocent.”

“That doesn’t mean he gets to use Mom as an excuse every time he doesn’t like a question.”

Dean shook his head. “Why’d you even ask? Why didn’t you just find a nice book like you usually do?”

Sam took a definite turn toward the sulky. “The librarian wouldn’t let me. Kept watching me like it would be such a sin for me to take a peek at books that might actually say something interesting.”

Dean snorted and ruffled Sam’s hair. “Awww, old enough to ask the question, but not old enough to find the answer on your own.”

Sam swatted at Dean’s hand, annoyed. “It’s not my fault the librarian’s stupid, asking me if my father knew.” He made a disgruntled sound. “He does now.”

Dean fell back onto his bed, forcing his body to be loose and easy. There were some days…he’d swear, there was nothing he wouldn’t do for his baby brother.

“See, there’s this thing called a penis—”

Sam rolled his eyes and threw his pillow back at him, flopping down into a heap of sulky eleven-year-old. It was a really attractive look, Dean had to admit. 

“I know that. It’s not _about_ that.”

He picked up the Gallicana Vulgate from Sam’s bed, tossing it from hand to hand, the binding kind of frayed and rough under his fingertips. “Oh, come on, you can’t tell me that the sight of Megan whatshername—with her long ponytail and little pink skirts—doesn’t make you pop a boner.”

Sam sat straight up, flushed bright red. “I hate you!”

Dean weighted the book in one hand and tossed it at Sam, grinning when he ducked it easily. “Lying’s a sin, Sammy.”

“You don’t believe in sin. And hey! I was reading that!”

Dean made a face. “And I’m sure you could tell me all about Jerome’s revisions and getting back to the ‘truth,’” Dean included the air quotes, “of Christianity—”

“Or the origins of demons, exorcisms. Gee, I wonder why I’d want—”

Dean talked over him, ignoring the bitter edge. “But that’s not what we’re here for.”

“Why _are_ you here?”

“Well, I live here,” he started, only to be stopped by Sam’s dark look. Fine, fine. No one _appreciated_ him.

Dean sighed. “But to the point. So now I shall pass unto you the wisdom of our father—”

“ _Your_ father.”

He shot him a look that told Sammy exactly where he could stuff _that_ one.

“Our father that he passed along to me when I was your age.” Dean grinned, loving that he got to say that. Some days, it paid to get out of bed in the morning.

Except, uhh.

Sam shifted uncomfortably, bed springs whining. “Um, yeah?”

Dean frowned. “I’m trying to remember what he said to me, actually.”

“You _forgot_?”

“Well, I was kind of in trouble at the time.”

“How’d you ask?”

The memory made Dean grin. “I didn’t. I tried to kiss Stephanie Angelie on the playground at the beginning of fifth grade. She told her mom, her mom called Dad, and Dad solemnly told me ‘we had to talk,’” he said, finishing it in an imitation of Dad that had Sam smiling reluctantly.

“The fact that he was trying not to laugh kinda ruined it, though,” he chuckled.

Sam’s eyes had gotten kind of round: “You didn’t ask?”

“Never much saw the point in talking. Not when you could be doing.”

“You just walked up and kissed her?” Sam asked, like he could barely stand to think of it.

“Oh, yeah. Then she shoved me on my ass into the sand and ran away screaming. Not exactly the reaction I was expecting,” he mused. Nah, it had been more like the swooning he saw on TV.

TV _lied_. It should put that in those public service announcements.

“And lemme tell ya, I had sand in places sand shouldn’t be and had to walk around all day like that.” He thought about it a beat. “Was worth it, though.”

“I don’t remember any of that!”

“Dude, you were, like, two.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Or seven.”

“Same difference. Besides, it’s not like Dad was gonna advertise. Knowing you, you’d probably want know everything and you saw Dad’s reaction in there just now.”

Sam dropped his head into despairing hands. “Why couldn’t I have been born into a normal family?”

“Hey hey! Enough of that. Now, do you wanna hear what I have to say or not?”

Sam looked up, conflicted, the pain of having this conversation warring with the insatiable need to _know_. Dean had no trouble guessing which would win out.

Sam made an impatient ‘go ahead’ gesture and Dean grinned.

“Well. As I recall his words were something along the lines of, ‘people have sex, it feels good, be careful, don’t get too attached, use condoms and make sure it’s not anything that will kill you.’”

Sam scrunched up his face in annoyance. It kinda made him look like a really big gremlin, actually. Dean grinned at the thought.

“That is so not helpful.”

“What, do you want me to draw you a diagram?”

“Gosh, would you really?”

“Hell, no!” Dean scratched his head. This could be going better. “Dude, you wanted books, we’ll get you books.”

“You couldn’t have said that an hour ago? I wouldn’t have had to listen—”

“Hey! This is golden Winchester wisdom over here!”

“‘Make sure it’s not anything that will kill you?’”

Dean nodded. “It’s a valid concern.”

“I should have just waited. Waited and kept my mouth shut and snuck into a library in a state that’s nicer to kids.”

“Aww, but we wouldn’t have had this bonding time and—”

“I do hate you, you know.”

“And there you go again.”

“And you still didn’t answer the question!” Sam said hotly.

Dean tilted his head, banging it back against the headboard as he looked up at the white swirls in the ceiling. “What was the question again?”

“Why you like girls.”

“They’re soft and pretty and they feel good,” Dean said, simple as that. Which it _was_.

“But—they’re all like that.”

“Yeah…” he trailed off, the question obvious.

“So what makes you like one more than another?”

“What, like blondes over brunettes? Aren’t you a little young to have a type?” he asked, looking back at Sammy, somehow making it harder and easier at the same time.

“No! Not what they look like, _them_.”

“Well, that sure clears things up,” Dean grumbled. “Where’s this coming from, anyway?”

“Writers keep talking about great romance…and I don’t get it.”

“Oh, your books. Of course. And you don’t get it because it’s a bunch of bs, Sammy.”

Sam went quiet, tracing a finger over his bedspread, trucks endlessly chasing after one another. “But Dad loved Mom.”

“That was—before.”

“What? Hunting takes that away, too?”

“Well, when are you ever gonna stick around long enough for it to be worth it?”

“I’m not saying I want to—I just want to know why.”

Dean spread his hands, at a loss. This conversation had taken a turn from the awkward to the bizarre and not only could Dean not figure out when the hell that had happened, he _still_ didn’t know what Sam was on about.

Dean shrugged.

“But you’ve—” Sam stopped, uncertain.

Dean smirked. “What? C’mon Sammy, you can say it,” he baited.

Sam squared his shoulders. “Gotten close to girls.”

“Close enough to touch, even,” he said, loving the way Sam kinda squirmed.

Not that he’d let Dean get him off-topic. No, no, that would be too much. “But don’t you like them for more than just because they’re soft and nice to look at?”

“They smell good,” Dean offered.

“Dean!” He sounded so incensed, like this was honestly shocking.

How could this _possibly_ be shocking? Didn’t Sam meet the same girls Dean did?

“Sammy, most of the girls I’ve known haven’t been anything special. Look, think of it like this, Dad always says Mom was one-of-a-kind. Maybe you should believe him.”

“You’re saying there’s no one else in the world who could be special?” Sam said flatly.

Dean shrugged again. “I’m saying that living our life and doing what we do…it doesn’t seem in the cards for us, bro.”

***

“Is all right again in your brother’s world?” Dad asked, soft. Dean flopped onto the couch, resting socked feet on the coffee table.

Which Dad promptly frowned at. Dean automatically folded them under himself instead.

“Maybe I should take Sammy to my health class.” He straightened, affecting his droning health teacher. “‘The key to a successful relationship is communication.’” He nodded sagely, just like Mrs. Marigold.

Dad actually smiled, folding his arms across his stomach and watching Dean. “This is what they’re teaching you in school these days?”

“‘Communication is the linchpin of any relationship, be it friendly or romantic.’ Seriously, comic gold. These poor kids just eat it up.” Dean shook his head sadly. “The state of our nation’s youth.”

Dad snorted again, swiping a hand out to cuff him on the back on the head, lightly. “You’re such a smartass.”

“Gosh, I wonder where I get that from.”

“What was Sammy wanting, anyway?” he murmured, looking sad and old all the sudden.

Dean ignored that thought. “Hell if I know. Romance, love, all the stuff they sell you on Hallmark cards.”

Dad rested his head back, closed his eyes like something was painful to look at. There was nothing in the room to look at.

“You know him, Dean. He won’t let it go. He’ll keep on asking until he’s satisfied.”

“So you give him a book, pat him on the head, and send him on his way. How hard is this?” he grumbled.

“Dean—”

“Actually, no, don’t pat him on the head. He really doesn’t take it well.”

Dad snorted, but sobered quickly enough. “Get him a book? Like what? ‘Navigating Love and Relationships in a World of Evil?’ ‘How to Tell if Your Lover is Demon-Spawn?’”

“Sound like bestsellers to me,” he quipped.

Dad chuckled lowly, giving him a fond look. “It’s good he has you around, son. You two—work.” He said it like it was a surprise, but a good one.

“Well, family’s all we got, right?”

He settled a hand on the back of Dean’s neck, squeezing lightly. “Right. All we got.”

***

Fin. Feedback is adored.


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